Steel, Hydrogen And Renewables: Strange Bedfellows? Maybe Not“¦

Steel, Hydrogen And Renewables: Strange Bedfellows? Maybe Not“¦

We cover global issues in oil, natural gas, energy and policy. The largest share of energy use in this industry is for crude steel making.. Hydrogen from renewables ("green hydrogen") could make a significant contribution to emissions reductions in the production of iron through the direct reduction of iron ore.. Electrolysis using renewable power (similar to today's Hall-Heroult electrolysis process for aluminium production, although such a process for iron and steel making has not been deployed beyond the lab scale);. The drop in natural gas prices in the US due to the boom in shale gas production has attracted new gas-based DRI capacity.. Based on forecasts for steel production and considering an increase of 15-29% in the DRI route for primary iron production, 350 Mt of new DRI capacity would be needed by 2050, a six-fold increase from today.. Germany would need 100 terawatt-hours (TWh) of renewable power (20% of today's national electricity consumption) to fully decarbonise the steel sector alone with DRI from green hydrogen.. A core step is direct reduction based on pure hydrogen rather than on natural gas.. The value-added of iron ore is modest, with the average export value less than US$50 per tonne.. A significant